Finance minister Michel Sapin told AFP that France’s economy will grow “by at least 1.1 percent” for 2015 as a whole, adding he believed the country had “exited the period of extremely weak growth that had lasted too long”.

But analysts were less impressed, pointing out that France’s ran a large trade deficit during the quarter. Only stockpiling by companies prevented the economy shrinking.

But Finland was the real shocker -- living up to its reputation as the ‘sick man of Europe’ with a 0.6% contraction.

Photograph: Finnish statistics body

Only Greece beat expectations - shrinking by a mere 0.5%, not the 1% expected. That tells you something about the accuracy of City forecasts, and the turmoil in the Greek economy this year. When a 0.5% contraction is ‘good news’, you know you’re been through the mire.

The eurozone’s economy lost steam in the latest quarter as Portugal stalled, Germany slowed and debt-stricken Greece contracted.

Gross domestic product (GDP) across the 19 countries in the single currency bloc rose just 0.3% in the third quarter, according to Eurostat. That defied expectations for growth to hold at 0.4%, according to a Reuters poll of economists. On a year earlier, GDP was up 1.6%, lower than forecasts for 1.7%.

Given region’s general malaise, the Eurozone as a whole was arguably lucky only to see a 0.1% decline quarter-on-quarter, with its Q3 figure coming in at a forecast-missing 0.3%. Understandably investors weren’t too pleased with these results, meaning even the spectre of more ECB QE (the likelihood of which only increased with this morning’s figures) couldn’t drag the DAX and CAC out of the red.

Eurozone growth slows to 0.3%

Breaking: The eurozone economy grew by just 0.3% in the third quarter of the year.

That’s a slowdown on the 0.4% recorded three months earlier, showing that Europe’s recovery remains fragile and lacklustre despite the huge stimulus measures launched by the European Central Bank this year.